What was a busy news morning for Minnesota politics just got hectic. Appearing on Esme Murphy’s program on WCCO-TV this morning, Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Tony Sutton said that he will approach Gov. Pawlenty to see if he’s willing to run against Amy Klobuchar.

Despite solid polling figures, Sen. Klobuchar is exceptionally vulnerable. She’s voted for each of President Obama’s failed economic policies, including his disastrous stimulus and Obamacare.

Minnesota is an innovator in the health care and health insurance industry. Sen. Klobuchar’s vote for Obamacare essentially took away Minnesota’s ability to innovate. What’s worse is that Obamacare raised taxes on 2 important Minnesota companies, Boston Scientific and Medtronic.

Gov. Pawlenty would be a strong advocate for a robust domestic energy production policy. He’d vote to limit the EPA’s and the NLRB’s authority. Finally, he’d vote to repeal Dodd-Frank and for tax reform.

A Pawlenty-Klobuchar match-up would instantly jump to being the most watched Senate race in the nation for 2012. With Sen. Klobuchar’s vulnerabilities and Gov. Pawlenty’s fundraising abilities, plus his substantial policy chops, Sen. Klobuchar’s best bet is to pray Gov. Pawlenty doesn’t jump into the race.

So ol’ Timmy couldn’t handle the fact the Michele threw it back in his face what a failure and RINO he was that he had to drop out of the race and now this is the best we can run against Hind Sight Klobuchar? What a joke the GOP in MN has become if this is what we will be offered in 2012. Why not just bring ol’ Norm back if we are just going to get a RINO to run?

I’ve had it with the TPaw-is-a-RINO crap. I’ll agree that he isn’t the firebreathing conservative that Michele is but he’s far from a RINO. A RINO would’ve caved into the DFL’s tax increases his last 4 years. A RINO wouldn’t have cut spending his last biennium in office.

In a state where the DFL media protects St. Amy & where 99% of the columnists would likely give their lives to protect her, Photo op Amy is a formidable candidate if the GOP candidate isn’t well-funded. TPaw would raise gobs of money He’d be able to get around the St. Amy-protecting media with ad buys. Without the fundraising, St. Amy glides to re-election. With the fund-raising, life gets infinitely more difficult for St. Amy.

Here’s an example of how weak Amy is. Today at a friendly gathering she gave a speech where she said she was protecting Social Security.

Um the best protection that Social Security has is a balanced budget. If I remember right when Amy got elected she was complaining about $200 billion dollar deficits. Now she’s eager to support deficits of $1.4 trillion dollars.

Any candidate who seriously runs on that message will beat her. Chip proved that!

Pawlenty is not a RINO. He’s the worse Republican Governor the State has experienced. But Republican. Same camp as Sutton and Brodkorb, and what’s that? RINO? Give me a break, and be serious. A Bill Cooper Republican. But as a vice-presidential candidate wouldn’t a Senate run be contradictory, counterproductive?

It there will be news about Klobuchar it would be via a primary challenge, not the general election. She is so middle of the road —

Here’s one along the lines of Republican retreads.

If Bachmann goes deep into the GOP sweepstakes, to where more than a placeholder is needed in CD6, who? The guy who was there before her? And that takes us full circle, to Klobuchar. Her election victory.